This invention relates to filtration of liquid spray drawn by a vacuum and particularly to filtration of the liquid spray by means of an absorbing filter including a liquid medium.
The vacuum removal of particles or materials in an air stream, particularly of fine size, commonly entails materials such as gypsum, encountered with sanding of wallboard; sawdust; house dust, liquid spray from a spray booth and the like. Continued efficacious removal of the fine particles or materials in an air stream further requires the utilization of replaceable filtration elements usually made of cloth, foam, paper and the like which trap the particles. However, such filtration elements must be periodically replaced since clogging reduces vacuum removal efficiency and this is at an economic cost and with lost time involved in the replacement. In addition, such replacements are at periodic short time intervals, especially with heavy duty and continuous applications.
In response to the demands placed on solid porous filters, fluid filtration has been utilized wherein the particle laden air is vacuum drawn into contact with a fluid (invariably water) surface with particles being removed by such water surface as a filtration of the air. Efficiency of such removal is however less than ideal since the air is not actually drawn through the water in a manner similar to the solid filters, but is instead caused to contact the surface of the water, and at most only bubbled through a short depth beneath the exposed surface.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a means for increasing the filtration efficiency of a liquid medium-containing filter.
It is a further object of the present invention to effect such increased efficiency by providing the liquid medium-containing filter with an apertured baffle system which directs and redirects spray laden air into multiple contacts with the filtering liquid medium surface.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more evident from the following discussion and drawings. in which: